Pierdomenico Baccalario

Hoopdriver

Adventure

Coming of age

“Where are you going, Billy? I’m going south. And why, Billy-who’s-going-south? Because I made a promise.”

When he finds out from the BBC that the Prime Minister is also ill, Billy Hoopdriver decides to run away from his working-class home in Liverpool without telling his father. He travels the 200 miles separating him from the little seaside town of Kewstoke on Azzurra (the mountain bike he has painstakingly assembled piece by piece) with the sole aim of reaching his grandfather’s care home as soon as possible, because he made a promise: if anything happens, kid, come straight here, OK?

A modern odyssey in the British countryside, blending a moving personal quest with a cast of unforgettable characters and stunning, real-life landscapes.
A deeply emotional coming-of-age story, rich in music, memory, and the strength of intergenerational bonds — where every mile is a promise kept.

Publisher: Mondadori

Target: 10+

Year: 2021

Author

Pierdomenico Baccalario

Pierdomenico Baccalario has been writing children’s novels since 1997, when he won the Il Battello a Vapore literary prize with La strada del Guerriero (The Way of the Warrior) using his neighbour’s name. Since then, his bestsellers have been written under as many pseudonyms (the best known being Ulysses Moore and Irene Adler), translated into more than thirty languages and published with major Italian and foreign publishers. He has collaborated with Lucca Comics & Games for more than twenty years, has written for Repubblica and is a columnist for the newspaper Corriere della Sera’s La Lettura literary supplement. In 2014, he founded the Book on a Tree creative agency in London.

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